Speaker 1: Good a team. This is part two of the conversation
Speaker 1: we started yesterday with Sabrina, hope you're enjoying it. I
Speaker 1: won't get in the way of what is to come
Speaker 1: enjoy see you at the end. Does that mean Sabrina
Speaker 1: your honor doctor?
Speaker 2: Does that mean that like my thinking is generally like
Speaker 2: when I would like, I've worked with first responders over here,
Speaker 2: with Victoria police and with the military a little bit,
Speaker 2: and with lots of elite athletes. And we just did
Speaker 2: a big study out of Monash where I study which
Speaker 2: I had my first academic paper published, which is hilarious,
Speaker 2: which is hilarious. Hang on because there's like fifty authors,
Speaker 2: so I really don't deserve any credit whatsoever, but my
Speaker 2: name is on it.
Speaker 1: What I wanted to say was generally speaking, we train
Speaker 1: a soldiers and police, especially the special operators like in
Speaker 1: Victoria they call it Special Operations Group, they call them soggies,
Speaker 1: and you know the elite soldiers where they do a
Speaker 1: lot of like intense high level, high pressure, uncomfortable like
Speaker 1: they just get put through the grind'. It's as it's
Speaker 1: as as realistic as it can be without it being real.
Speaker 1: Is there a similar approach to train firefighters to be
Speaker 1: able to deal with that, because you can't perform under
Speaker 1: pressure if you're never under pressure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally agree. I totally agree. And if you are
Speaker 3: just going through the motions. I mean, there's an element
Speaker 3: where you can do that for skills development, right where
Speaker 3: you're learning a skill and you're doing it slow time
Speaker 3: and then you get better at it. But unless you're
Speaker 3: actually testing that skill under pressure, actually, how do you
Speaker 3: know that you're going to be able to use it
Speaker 3: when you need to use it, because by the way,
Speaker 3: that time is going to be under intense pressure, both
Speaker 3: in terms of the pressure of the environment, the moral
Speaker 3: pressure that you're under from people who are watching on
Speaker 3: the people that you might be trying to rescue, and
Speaker 3: experiencing someone else. You know, when someone else is in
Speaker 3: pain or someone else has just experienced the death of
Speaker 3: someone that they love literally next to them in a
Speaker 3: car or in a house that you've managed to rescue
Speaker 3: one from, and someone else, there is nothing that prepares
Speaker 3: you for the emotion that you hear in that person's
Speaker 3: There is nothing that prepares you for that. But you
Speaker 3: have to carry on. You have to be able to
Speaker 3: do what you need to do. And I'm particularly interested
Speaker 3: in non technical skills. In the UK, we term them
Speaker 3: command skills, so your ability to make decisions, your situational awareness,
Speaker 3: your communication skills, your leadership skills, your ability to work
Speaker 3: as a part of a team. You know, all of
Speaker 3: these things are skills. They're not you know, they're not.
Speaker 3: They're not some kind of higher gift that you get
Speaker 3: that you know you're kind of born with. If you're
Speaker 3: either a great decision maker or you're not, you've got
Speaker 3: to work at it. And working at it means doing
Speaker 3: it in the kind of environment that you're readily going
Speaker 3: to expect to use it in, and in our world,
Speaker 3: that means that it's going to be emotionally charged, dynamically changing,
Speaker 3: with little or incomplete information, sometimes inaccurate information, and it's
Speaker 3: really tough. And it's a bit like swimming. If you
Speaker 3: wanted to swim the length of the channel or swim
Speaker 3: in the sea, but you only ever trained in an
Speaker 3: Olympic sized swimming pool. You know what, you might be
Speaker 3: the fastest, the best, that you might have the greatest
Speaker 3: endurance in a pool, but as soon as you get
Speaker 3: out in the sea, even though it's the same skill
Speaker 3: the context is so different, the application changes and so
Speaker 3: you're not going to be able to do it in
Speaker 3: the same way. And those kind of non technical skills,
Speaker 3: the development of those are similar. So whatever technical skill
Speaker 3: you might be doing under pressure, it is determined by
Speaker 3: your non technical skills. Your ability to make a judgment
Speaker 3: on when that needs to applied or how that needs
Speaker 3: to be applied, Your ability to communicate your intentions, your
Speaker 3: ability to absorb the information from around you that you
Speaker 3: need to create, your situational awareness, your mental picture, that
Speaker 3: which is the basis of every single decision and every
Speaker 3: single judgment that you make. That is tough, and if
Speaker 3: you want to do that under pressure, we need to
Speaker 3: recognize that stress affects the processing capacity that you have available.
Speaker 3: It reduces it, so you have less processing capacity available
Speaker 3: to absorb that information. You have less processing capacity available
Speaker 3: to make a decision, You have less processing capacity available
Speaker 3: to think about the message that you're trying to communicate
Speaker 3: and whether or not that meaning has landed in the
Speaker 3: way that you intended it to land. These are all
Speaker 3: really important factors for the success of the overarching incident
Speaker 3: because it's complex. So if you want those to work effectively,
Speaker 3: you have to train them under pressure. Is no good
Speaker 3: just doing it in slow time. You have to train
Speaker 3: under pressure, and so making people feel uncomfortable by putting
Speaker 3: if you're doing a command at exercise, for example, by
Speaker 3: throwing lots of injects in so you don't have time
Speaker 3: to think about something. You don't have the luxury of
Speaker 3: being able to hold lots of things together in your
Speaker 3: mind at one point. It creates that sense of pressure
Speaker 3: where you then have to prioritize your activity. And actually,
Speaker 3: even if in real time the situation might not be
Speaker 3: like that for the full duration of the hour that
Speaker 3: your command exercise is, actually you're compressing it and so
Speaker 3: what you get is like really deep practice. If you've
Speaker 3: heard the term deep practice, it's what you're kind of synthesizing,
Speaker 3: and it's about feeling uncomfortable. It's about doing things wrong
Speaker 3: and then repeating them in a different way so that
Speaker 3: you can do it better next time. But creating that
Speaker 3: sense of pressure in whatever way you can do it
Speaker 3: is super important. I'm a really big fan of realistic exercises.
Speaker 3: I know they're super expensive to do. I know it's hard,
Speaker 3: especially when you get places like I mean in the UK,
Speaker 3: we have the Casualties Union, who are an amazing group
Speaker 3: of people, many of whom are amputees who've been through
Speaker 3: traumatic incidents themselves, who will come in and role play
Speaker 3: that they have incredible makeup on to simulate, to simulate
Speaker 3: traumatic injuries, and they respond in a way that is
Speaker 3: really realistic. And these people are incredible because bear in
Speaker 3: mind they've had their own traumas. To come in and
Speaker 3: to be able to do that those experiences to help
Speaker 3: develop the people that they know other people will rely
Speaker 3: on in the future to go and rescue them from
Speaker 3: similar circumstances is a level of courage that to me
Speaker 3: is absolutely god worthy. It is awesome. But that kind
Speaker 3: of realistic opportunity is worth waiting gold, absolutely worth its
Speaker 3: weight in gold. But whatever you're doing when you're training,
Speaker 3: don't just go through the motions. Don't just go to
Speaker 3: get through the end of the exercise. Make it count.
Speaker 3: You can never train too hard for a job where
Speaker 3: you know people die.
Speaker 1: I love that and it's so like I always you know,
Speaker 1: I use this analogy of white belt to black belt
Speaker 1: and I say, you know, the way that you become
Speaker 1: a black belt in any martial art is you start
Speaker 1: as a white belt. You get punched in the face,
Speaker 1: you get kicked in the deck, you get choked. You know,
Speaker 1: this is what happens. You know, you get beaten up,
Speaker 1: and then eventually you're a yellow, then eventually a green,
Speaker 1: and a brown, and a purple and a blue, and
Speaker 1: then whatever the system is, you know, and then one
Speaker 1: day you wake up. You're the same person with the
Speaker 1: same potential and the same genetics, but now you've got
Speaker 1: new skills, new awareness, new resilience, new understanding, new insight.
Speaker 1: Same human but not really. And now you've got that
Speaker 1: you can perform under a level of pressure that you
Speaker 1: couldn't even think about when you're a white belt, because
Speaker 1: you didn't know what you were doing. You couldn't be calm,
Speaker 1: you didn't know how to self regulate. And now five six, seven, eight,
Speaker 1: ten years down the track, you've got this high level
Speaker 1: of ability and skill to be able to do this
Speaker 1: thing that most people can't. And it's because you did
Speaker 1: the work, and it's because you weren't fucking around. It's
Speaker 1: because you had five dislocated elbows and these, it's because
Speaker 1: you've got a thousand black eyes, it's because you've got
Speaker 1: choked fifty times. It's like that's you can't get good
Speaker 1: at the thing that you're not doing. You can't master
Speaker 1: the thing that you avoid. And you can read about
Speaker 1: it and hear about it and watch fucking videos on
Speaker 1: it and listen to lectures about it, but unless you're
Speaker 1: actually doing it, like unless you're actually at the coal face,
Speaker 1: rolling up your sleeves and doing the shit or a
Speaker 1: version of it, then when the storm cometh, Brothers and Sisters,
Speaker 1: you capitulate. You know, We've had lots of people and
Speaker 1: speaking to that, just as an example, we've had people
Speaker 1: on the show and I can't say who, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. Well, no, I can't say who. But even
Speaker 1: something like this where people can obviously, you know, they've
Speaker 1: got their expertise like you, they've got skill, knowledge, you know,
Speaker 1: all of that. They can communicate and sometimes they've written
Speaker 1: a book and you know, some whatever. But then you
Speaker 1: put them on either I used to work in radio
Speaker 1: as well, and so you put them in a radio
Speaker 1: interview or on an interview with this where you say,
Speaker 1: you know, you give them a backstory of you know,
Speaker 1: how many people listen and what we do, and and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden and we're live. That person goes
Speaker 1: from being interesting and funny and articulate too. Yes, no, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm like, fucking hell, somebody just removed his personality in
Speaker 1: the last thirty seconds. And it's just it's terrible because
Speaker 1: to them, there's when you say, I used to say
Speaker 1: to people, there's only twenty thousand people, don't you know listening,
Speaker 1: don't worry, And I would say that's fuck around. I
Speaker 1: don't say it anymore, or how I can say it
Speaker 1: to you because you do this all the time. But like,
Speaker 1: and then people, especially if you're thinking of a stadium
Speaker 1: of humans or something, that's something that they do all
Speaker 1: the time, which is talk and share and educate. Now
Speaker 1: you're doing it in a different context and they can't
Speaker 1: string three words together because there's a level, a self
Speaker 1: created level of pressure. Yeah, and maybe I influenced that
Speaker 1: a little bit.
Speaker 3: It's true though, And it's you know, it's really similar
Speaker 3: when you think about things like, you know, even a
Speaker 3: job interview or a presentation.
Speaker 4: How many times when.
Speaker 3: You've got a big presentation, have you kind of practiced
Speaker 3: that in front of a plant pot or in front
Speaker 3: of the dog? Well, guess what, the dog's never going
Speaker 3: to troll you on Twitter.
Speaker 5: It's a safe environment. You know, You've got to do
Speaker 5: it in front of people that make you feel uncomfortable,
Speaker 5: because when you step in to do that presentation or
Speaker 5: that job interview, you're going to be running on adrenaline,
Speaker 5: You're going to feel anxious, you're going to feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 5: So you need to know that you can do it
Speaker 5: despite that feeling. You need to know that you've practiced
Speaker 5: it in that kind of enviroment. You need to know
Speaker 5: the places that your head is going to go blank,
Speaker 5: where you're going to stumble, so then you can go
Speaker 5: and focus on those bits and make sure you know
Speaker 5: it better.
Speaker 3: You know that for me, it's a gift. It's an
Speaker 3: absolute gift to have an opportunity to practice something before
Speaker 3: you go in and before you do it, and to
Speaker 3: develop those skills. And if it means, you know, you
Speaker 3: feel uncomfortable, it means you mess something up, or it
Speaker 3: means you feel a bit silly, well, you know what,
Speaker 3: that's a really small price to pay for all of
Speaker 3: the good stuff that could come out of you being
Speaker 3: successful at this, you know, and in my world that
Speaker 3: means people walk away, They get to go back to
Speaker 3: their families. At the end of the day, there's not
Speaker 3: this great, big void left by someone that's no longer
Speaker 3: walking this planet. What a gift, What a gift.
Speaker 1: A couple of years ago, and I know you've got
Speaker 1: to go. We'll talk about your book in a moment.
Speaker 1: But a couple of years ago, Sabrina, that's actually it
Speaker 1: was it three years ago, the Crab. Yeah, three yeah,
Speaker 1: So I was you know, I think I told you
Speaker 1: before when it went live. I've been training my whole life.
Speaker 1: I owned gyms all that, so go to the gym
Speaker 1: every day and just left. Shit, I'm not very good anymore.
Speaker 1: I'm old, I'm a bit fucked. But anyway, I still
Speaker 1: go down, you know, sit on a dumbbell. But anyway,
Speaker 1: The Crab my training partner, Mark, who I lovingly call
Speaker 1: the Crab because he moves like a crab. He's like
Speaker 1: a large crustacean with biceps. But anyway, so we were
Speaker 1: training and he did a set of chin ups, held
Speaker 1: his breath the whole time. Sabrina did thirty chin ups,
Speaker 1: not an exaggeration. X pro body built, a very strong,
Speaker 1: very big all of that did thirty chins, came down
Speaker 1: and went to his hands and knees, and I thought
Speaker 1: he was having a seizure, and he had a cardiac
Speaker 1: arrest and died in the gym, on the gym floor.
Speaker 1: So he came back to life, I need say that quickly,
Speaker 1: but he was dead for seventeen minutes. And and talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, people under pressure, I would say there was.
Speaker 1: There's probably twenty people in the gym, but in him
Speaker 1: because there's there's levels to the gym. But within a
Speaker 1: couple of minutes there were thirty or forty people in
Speaker 1: the gym. And so i'd you know, his big unit
Speaker 1: is one hundred kilos, which I don't know what that
Speaker 1: is in stone, seventeen stone maybe, So I, you know,
Speaker 1: I got him on his back, I got him into
Speaker 1: a position where I could work on him, and I
Speaker 1: did that like as soon as I realized what had happened,
Speaker 1: which was quite quickly. So I started working on him
Speaker 1: by myself. Now thirty people were standing on the other
Speaker 1: side of the gym, not one thing like looking terrified.
Speaker 1: Not one person went what can I do? Not one
Speaker 1: person said can I help? And so I just looked
Speaker 1: up and said I need somebody, and they all stood
Speaker 1: there like, nobody came, and so here's here's my friend
Speaker 1: on the floor. I'm doing the compressions and the breaths.
Speaker 1: I'm so I'm alternating, and I'm you know, I'm busy.
Speaker 1: I got shipped on and I look up and nobody
Speaker 1: moved forward. Nobody came. They all just stood there looking terrified.
Speaker 1: And then this one bloke kind of looked semi like
Speaker 1: like he was thinking about it. And I said, what's
Speaker 1: your name? And he said his name? And I said,
Speaker 1: let's just go, Steve, and I said, Steven, get the
Speaker 1: fuck over here. He's like, I don't know what to do.
Speaker 1: I go get the fuck over here. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: what to do, right and that that but that a maze,
Speaker 1: Well that was messy, and that was you know, like
Speaker 1: a daunting scenario, of course, but I was upon reflection later,
Speaker 1: I was amazed at how I don't know if nobody
Speaker 1: knew what to do, but nobody, nobody came forward. Like
Speaker 1: I literally had to swear at someone to get someone
Speaker 1: to help me. And that's, you know, because who's standing
Speaker 1: next to someone when they die. Very few people, you know,
Speaker 1: not in not where we live anyway, you know. And
Speaker 1: then so you're right, people just don't know what to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and normally comfortable, competent, you know, pretty adaptable, flexible people
Speaker 1: fucking freeze in certain circumstances.
Speaker 2: Do you know.
Speaker 3: Well, firstly, I'm really sorry that you had that experience,
Speaker 3: but also you are incredible because you have literally saved
Speaker 3: Mark's life there in that in that scenario. So he's
Speaker 3: alive because of the intervention that you made, and that's
Speaker 3: that's pretty incredible and definitely something worth recognizing. But it's
Speaker 3: it's funny how other people respond in a situation where
Speaker 3: they feel deeply uncomfortable. There's been some really interesting research
Speaker 3: that's looked at how when in an emergency situation, if
Speaker 3: there's somebody that's already intervening, other people will stand by,
Speaker 3: will be less likely to come forward and help because
Speaker 3: they think it's dealt with. And it's really challenging because
Speaker 3: in that kind of circumstance, actually you need all the
Speaker 3: hands that you can get right, You need that help
Speaker 3: and you need that support, and some of it comes
Speaker 3: from a lack of confidence, I think. And it's interesting,
Speaker 3: you know, because we almost had kind of the opposite
Speaker 3: problem in the fire service. So there was one of
Speaker 3: the things that we introduced when we were doing all
Speaker 3: of the research and the policy changes on the back
Speaker 3: of the research was some work around something that we
Speaker 3: term operational discretion, and that's the flexibility to recognize when
Speaker 3: a policy doesn't apply that you will actually do what
Speaker 3: you think needs to be done, used your professional judgment
Speaker 3: to do whatever you need to do in that circumstance.
Speaker 3: And there were some incidents, some really high profile incidents
Speaker 3: that we had in the UK where people had died
Speaker 3: because people were One of the contributing factors part of me.
Speaker 3: One of the contributing factors was that everybody was so
Speaker 3: focused on sticking to the policy that the policy wouldn't
Speaker 3: have worked for that situation. Sticking to the policy actually
Speaker 3: made the outcome worse. There was one called there was
Speaker 3: one in Gosden Mine where a mine shaft had collapsed
Speaker 3: and a lady had fallen down the mine shaft and
Speaker 3: was trapped down there for a considerable amount of time,
Speaker 3: and one of the incident commanders, the fire commanders, wanted
Speaker 3: to adapt some equipment to be able to get them out,
Speaker 3: and another disagreed because it was outside of policy and
Speaker 3: stopped it all and insisted on waiting for the mine rescue,
Speaker 3: and the woman ended up being trapped down there for
Speaker 3: so long that one of the contributing factors to her
Speaker 3: death was hypothermia. Now it would be wrong to say
Speaker 3: it was solely because of the the delay caused by
Speaker 3: that or sticking rigidly to the policy, but what was
Speaker 3: talked about by the judge afterwards when they were looking
Speaker 3: at her death is that that was one of the
Speaker 3: inflexibility was one of the contributing factors. So it's funny
Speaker 3: because if you were not in a uniform, you'd grab
Speaker 3: whatever you could grab and you would do what you
Speaker 3: could to try to make it work right. But as
Speaker 3: soon as you put up that uniform, you have that
Speaker 3: different responsibility, that different level of accountability, and the judgments,
Speaker 3: I think, and the you know, the judgment that you
Speaker 3: would have after an event once you're wearing that uniform
Speaker 3: and representing one of the services is far greater than
Speaker 3: a member of the public would have if they were
Speaker 3: just trying to do their best to help out. Of
Speaker 3: the things that we introduced was this concept of operational discretion,
Speaker 3: where if you recognize that adhering strictly to the policy
Speaker 3: either is going to make it worse because that happens sometimes,
Speaker 3: or the policy it's such a novel situation that the
Speaker 3: policy does apply, then it gives that kind of flexibility
Speaker 3: to choose what to do in that circumstance. And we
Speaker 3: did some research on this, and we were looking at
Speaker 3: the impact of stress and uncertainty on decision making when
Speaker 3: applying operational discretion. That was our kind of driver for it,
Speaker 3: and we gave fire commanders two scenarios. One was really
Speaker 3: straightforward runn of the mail. It was a high rise
Speaker 3: fire where they knew what to do, they knew what
Speaker 3: to expect them, was a super superclear policy, no need
Speaker 3: to deviate. And the other one was similar to this.
Speaker 3: It was a mind shaft. It had collapsed, a sinkhole, sorry,
Speaker 3: it had collapsed, and there was a group of children
Speaker 3: stuck at the bottom and it was outside of the
Speaker 3: reach of their normal equipment. So you would have to
Speaker 3: use operational discretion. And we took measures of stress as well,
Speaker 3: and rather than just relying on self report, because you
Speaker 3: could ask a firefighter with a mushroom cloud behind them
Speaker 3: how they are and they'd be like, yeah, everything's fine,
Speaker 3: I got this under control. Even if the heart beating
Speaker 3: tens of the dozerts. So we took blood samples so
Speaker 3: that we could measure it was actually a leucocyte response
Speaker 3: rather than a single measure of corters are. We were
Speaker 3: looking more holistically at a range of measures, because when
Speaker 3: you experience stress, your cells respond differently, and so we
Speaker 3: looked at at the leukocyte response to give us a
Speaker 3: better measure. And what we found is the more uncertain
Speaker 3: the situation, the higher the stress levels. Not surprising there,
Speaker 3: but the more uncertain the situation and the higher the
Speaker 3: stress levels, the more certain people were to reach for
Speaker 3: a set of rules even when they didn't apply. And
Speaker 3: so this was a really interesting one because we all
Speaker 3: do this sometimes and we're making a decision under uncertainty
Speaker 3: or we're not quite sure what to do, and it's pressured,
Speaker 3: and we'll reach for something that might feel familiar because
Speaker 3: it gives us that sense of security, but it might
Speaker 3: not actually be the right thing for that set of circumstances.
Speaker 3: So my advice to people, whether they're in the fire
Speaker 3: service or not, is if you are making a decision
Speaker 3: or under the decision under those circumstances and you find
Speaker 3: yourself reaching for something that makes you feel better, or
Speaker 3: something that gives you that sense of comfort, or something
Speaker 3: that's familiar to you. Just pause and just double check
Speaker 3: your assumptions to make sure that it's actually delivering the
Speaker 3: outcome that you're hoping it's going to deliver.
Speaker 1: That makes so much sense, And I can understand why
Speaker 1: people do that, because they're protecting themselves because if this
Speaker 1: turns out bad, it's not my fault. It's the rules.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 1: And if I kind of be the rebel and it
Speaker 1: turns out bad, it's my fault, whereas it might have
Speaker 1: been bad anyway.
Speaker 3: You know, it's such a litigious society now as well,
Speaker 3: and you know, you see the way that incidents where
Speaker 3: people we're not automatons in a uniform. We're human beings.
Speaker 3: You know, we're real people at the end of the day.
Speaker 3: And when you see the way that people are judged
Speaker 3: after an event who might have got it wrong, but
Speaker 3: they've gone in genuinely wanting to do their best, you know,
Speaker 3: it could be really difficult then for someone to find
Speaker 3: the courage to take a leap to do the thing
Speaker 3: that they think needs to be done without that security
Speaker 3: of a set of rules. To wrap around them. I
Speaker 3: get it.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I know you don't have any spare time because you're
Speaker 1: an author and you're a mum, and you're a dog mum,
Speaker 1: and you're a wife, and you're a bloody superstar at
Speaker 1: fifty things, and you're a researcher and you're a fire
Speaker 1: fighter and you've got a thousand test subjects whenever you
Speaker 1: want them. But you definitely should have your own podcast. Ah,
Speaker 1: you'd be so good. Like you're such a brilliant communicator
Speaker 1: and storyteller, and you you're such a good science communicator too,
Speaker 1: because you explain complicated stuff in an uncomplicated way or
Speaker 1: what can be complicated stuff. Because we're a largely non
Speaker 1: academic you know, we've got a percentage of academics that listen,
Speaker 1: but you know it's not an academic show per se.
Speaker 1: And so my constant, or my not every episode, but
Speaker 1: a lot of episodes, I'm trying to figure out, how
Speaker 1: do we say this, and how do we navigate this
Speaker 1: conversation and make it you know, interesting, but also really
Speaker 1: relevant stable so people can do something with it. And
Speaker 1: you just do that automatically. It's a real gift and
Speaker 1: a real skill. So well, done you. It's amazing.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Tell me about before we go, tell me about the book.
Speaker 1: So your book is called The Heat of the Moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right to tell us about that, did you? Is
Speaker 1: that your one and only book?
Speaker 3: I've got another one coming out in March. But the
Speaker 3: Heat of the Moment I wanted to take something that
Speaker 3: would talk about the way that we make decisions under pressure,
Speaker 3: because it doesn't matter what the circumstances are, you know,
Speaker 3: our brains are going to work in a similar way.
Speaker 3: So I took everything that we'd learned from more than
Speaker 3: twenty years of firefighting and more than a decade of
Speaker 3: research about how we make decisions in the heat of
Speaker 3: the moment, when we're experiencing pressure, and I wanted to
Speaker 3: talk about it in a way that could be then
Speaker 3: applied to everyday life. So each chapter talks about a
Speaker 3: specific aspect of decision making with it gut decision making,
Speaker 3: whether it's you know, the way that you develop your
Speaker 3: situational awareness, whether it's the way that you communicate all
Speaker 3: of these concepts. And it opens with an incident that
Speaker 3: I've been to and so that you can see that
Speaker 3: part of that aspect of how your brain is working
Speaker 3: actually kind of at a real life incident in reality,
Speaker 3: and then I unpick the research that's relevant to it,
Speaker 3: and then I kind of talk about how it applies
Speaker 3: to everyday life as well. So, yeah, that was a
Speaker 3: real That was a real labor of love to write.
Speaker 3: It was a real joy. Actually, It's just nice to
Speaker 3: be able to share what we've done with the broad
Speaker 3: or audience because I think, you know, there are some
Speaker 3: really important lessons that we've learned in the fire service,
Speaker 3: and they've been learned through a lot of pain, as
Speaker 3: I described earlier on. And so isn't it great that
Speaker 3: you can share that with as many people as possible
Speaker 3: and not just limit it to those that were the
Speaker 3: same color perform as you?
Speaker 1: Do you think that being able to self regulate in
Speaker 1: the middle of the mayhem and you know, make decisions
Speaker 1: and stay relatively calm. Do you think that we spoke
Speaker 1: about it a little bit before, but do you think
Speaker 1: that is more innate? Like I feel like there are
Speaker 1: people that are just better than that. And also my
Speaker 1: part B of that question is are people more anxious
Speaker 1: now than thirty years ago? Or we just more aware
Speaker 1: of anxiety?
Speaker 3: Sabrina really good question. I think that it's I think
Speaker 3: that it's a mixture of nature and nurture every single time,
Speaker 3: and I think that it can be developed as well
Speaker 3: of what you expose yourself to and how you respond
Speaker 3: to that exposure and how willing you are to put
Speaker 3: yourself in those uncomfortable situations like we talked about. And
Speaker 3: the anxiety question is a really good one. I think
Speaker 3: that I don't think people are more anxious than they
Speaker 3: are today than they were before. I think they just
Speaker 3: wont allowed to show it before because of the societal
Speaker 3: pressures that people were experiencing. I think the world was
Speaker 3: super different, wasn't it. So I think there's that element.
Speaker 3: I mean, there are things that make us feel anxious
Speaker 3: today that weren't around before. Exposure or social media, I
Speaker 3: think is a key one. I mean, I can have
Speaker 3: firefighters at a job and the job will be uploaded
Speaker 3: onto YouTube by someone with their camera phone before they've
Speaker 3: even packed up and left the scene. You know, so
Speaker 3: previously it would never be like that. You never had
Speaker 3: to kind of worry about those kind of things. So
Speaker 3: I think my point is if someone does make a mistake,
Speaker 3: it's usually recorded and there forever and You've seen the
Speaker 3: way that people respond publicly to people who've made mistakes,
Speaker 3: and it's kind of huge debate, isn't there around cancel
Speaker 3: culture and things like that? So I think there is.
Speaker 3: I think whilst judgments would have been the same across
Speaker 3: the ages, I think that they are a lot more
Speaker 3: public now than they perhaps were previously. So it's really difficult,
Speaker 3: isn't it to compare times to say whether people were
Speaker 3: more anxious thirty years ago or whether they're more anxious today,
Speaker 3: because I think the context is so different that it's
Speaker 3: really tricky to kind of weigh everything up and go
Speaker 3: one or the other. But I certainly think that there
Speaker 3: are things today that can make you feel anxious that
Speaker 3: you didn't have thirty years ago. I think we have
Speaker 3: the luxury today of being able to be really open
Speaker 3: about being anxious, which means you can deal with it
Speaker 3: better than you might have been able to do thirty
Speaker 3: years ago. So there's definitely a silver lining there.
Speaker 1: All Right, We've got to go, because I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm dragging you you on, but just I'm so interested
Speaker 1: in your stuff. I want to ask you two quick
Speaker 1: questions and I'm promised we'll go. So Number one is
Speaker 1: so you're all about excellence, high performance, performing under pressure,
Speaker 1: you know, being the best you can be. And are
Speaker 1: there any other fire serve around the world that you
Speaker 1: look at in any country or it might just anywhere
Speaker 1: in the world where you go, they're the best, They
Speaker 1: are amazing for these reasons.
Speaker 3: Oh, I think that's a great question. And I think
Speaker 3: there are different fire services that are really excellent at
Speaker 3: different things. And sometimes you have the persona of the
Speaker 3: biggest and the best, and you hear about, you know,
Speaker 3: the great ones around the world and things I won't
Speaker 3: mention any names, but when you actually scratch the surface,
Speaker 3: they don't always turn out to be as shiny as
Speaker 3: you might have thought they were outside. So I think
Speaker 3: there's real value if you are looking for the best
Speaker 3: in looking really specifically at what you want to see
Speaker 3: the best of and not stopping until you've turned over
Speaker 3: all the stones that you can to find it, because
Speaker 3: the places that you might find it might just surprise you.
Speaker 1: And do you do you ever look across the pond
Speaker 1: with any curiosity on our Australian summers with the bloody
Speaker 1: bushfires that we we seem to be having more and
Speaker 1: more of that have been devastating in the last few
Speaker 1: years over here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they have been utterly devastating, and your first responders
Speaker 3: I have a huge amount of admiration for the way
Speaker 3: that they've tackled them, because those kind of incidents are relentless.
Speaker 3: They're not the kind of incidence that you go to
Speaker 3: and a couple of hours later you're back at the
Speaker 3: station and its job and not you know, it's all finished.
Speaker 3: Is day after day, week after week with those kind
Speaker 3: of incidents, and they are exhausting. So your first responders,
Speaker 3: I have to say, I think are exemplary in the
Speaker 3: way that they have They've dealt with that and shown
Speaker 3: incredible resilience and courage in the face of doing so,
Speaker 3: as have been your communities actually who I've seen a
Speaker 3: huge amount of resilience from having gone through those incidents
Speaker 3: and they are utterly devastating. And one of the things
Speaker 3: that we are thinking about more and more now as
Speaker 3: fire services is the impact of climate change on weather
Speaker 3: related incidents. You know, we've been having some awful wildfires
Speaker 3: here in the UK, not like not to the extent
Speaker 3: that you do in Australia, because our demography is very different.
Speaker 3: You know, we don't have the same kind of forested
Speaker 3: areas that you do there and the expanse that you
Speaker 3: do there, but they have been devastating for the wildlife
Speaker 3: that we do have here, and they're happening more and
Speaker 3: more regularly. Same with flooding. So actually thinking about what
Speaker 3: we can do to prevent those happening in the first place,
Speaker 3: to really get ahead of that is something that's super
Speaker 3: important to us, and we're doing a lot of work
Speaker 3: at the moment in my own fire department looking at
Speaker 3: how we can kind of improve the work that we
Speaker 3: do in rural communities to stop those kind of incidents
Speaker 3: happening in the first place.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Perfect, well, Sabrina, you're fascinating, you're Grey communicator. We
Speaker 1: appreciate you having a chat with us on the You project.
Speaker 1: Thank you, and I want you to come back when
Speaker 1: your new books out so we can talk about that
Speaker 1: and stell lots of books for you. Is that all right,
Speaker 1: my pleasure?
Speaker 3: It would be great, And it's been an absolute joy
Speaker 3: to speak to you today, So thank you so much
Speaker 3: for having me.
Speaker 1: Absolute pleasure, Melissa, do you like Sabrina.
Speaker 4: Oh, of course, thank you so much for spending all
Speaker 4: this time with us. What a privilege to listen to
Speaker 4: your story. And yeah, I've just been sitting here and all,
Speaker 4: so thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Are you crushing hard just a little bit? And I
Speaker 1: can tell. I can tell because you get that goofy.
Speaker 1: I love her look on your face. Hey, Sabrina, stay there.
Speaker 1: We'll say goodbye off air, but thank you so much,
Speaker 1: and thanks everyone. We appreciate you.